Armand Mattelart
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Armand Mattelart (; born January 8, 1936) is a Belgian sociologist, known as a leftist French scholar. His work deals with media, culture and communication, specially in their historical and international dimensions.


Biography

After finishing his undergraduate studies Mattelart joined a community of secular monks in
Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...
for one year, but went on to study Law and Political Science at the
Catholic University of Louvain The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
. Afterwards he studied demography at the Institute of Demographic Studies in Paris (founded by the left intellectual Alfred Sauvy, who in 1952 coined the term Third World). Upon finishing his studies he was appointed as an expert on the politics of population by the Vatican, and in 1962 was sent to the Universidad Católica de Chile. While in Chile he married Michèle Mattelart. While in Chile Mattelart was appointed to confront from a catholic spiritual perspective the strategic models for family planning which were at the time being pushed by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations and the Alianza para el Progreso (
Alliance for Progress The Alliance for Progress () was an initiative launched by U.S. President John F. Kennedy on March 13, 1961, that aimed to establish economic cooperation between the U.S. and Latin America. Governor Luis Muñoz Marín of Puerto Rico was a close ...
—a US official aid program). The US family planning model aimed to limit the natality to "improve the lives of the inhabitants of the continent" and of course in conflict with the Catholic teachings. The revolutionary transformations in Latin America post-1960 require that the Church enter the ideological fray and develop communication strategies applied to "ideological, political and social struggles" to create ideological and political alternatives to atheist communism or the "protestant North
American imperialism U.S. imperialism or American imperialism is the expansion of political, economic, cultural, media, and military influence beyond the boundaries of the United States. Depending on the commentator, it may include imperialism through outright mi ...
". While always based at the Catholic Univ. of Chile, Mattelart underwent a transformation in his thoughts and beliefs. He initiated a collaboration with the Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Nacional (CEREN) (Center for the Study of the National Reality), founded in 1968 under the auspices of the Catholic Univ.
Jacques Chonchol Jacques Chonchol (26 March 1926 – 5 October 2023) was a Chilean politician and professor known for his work in the Chilean land reform, land reform movement during the 1960s and early 1970s. Chonchol served from 1970 to 1972 as Ministry of Ag ...
was CEREN's director (also an important ideolog with MAPU—a left offshoot of the Christian Democrats which was also part of the Unidad Popular government). CEREN's first research conducted by Armando Mattelart, Michèle Mattelart, Mabel Paccini, et al., had to do with a structural left analysis of the liberal press, the "celebrity" publications, the pseudo-amorous magazines. Mattelart primarily studied ''
El Mercurio (known online as ''El Mercurio On-Line'', ''EMOL'') is a Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. is owned by El Mercurio S.A.P. (''Sociedad Anónima Periodística'' 'joint stock news company'), which operates a network of ...
'', the principal liberal newspaper. This was the starting-point of his lifelong involvement with the history of communications. The ''Cuadernos de la Realidad Nacional'' (Notebooks of the National Reality), CEREN's publication, became the principal ideological generators and emitters during the social democratic government of
Salvador Allende Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 1970 until Death of Salvador Allende, his death in 1973 Chilean coup d'état, 1973. As a ...
(1970–1973). The journal was similar to the French post-structuralist model, and it was primarily aimed to analyze the political economy of the mass media. Under this rubric, Mattelart and
Ariel Dorfman Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean- American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American s ...
published in 1971 the famous pamphlet: ''Para leer al Pato Donald, manual de descolonización antinorteamericana'' ('' How to read "Donald Duck", a manual for American de-colonization''), where they provided a Marxist structural analysis of global forms of American
consumer capitalism Consumer capitalism is a theoretical economic and social political condition in which consumer demand is manipulated in a deliberate and coordinated way on a very large scale through mass-marketing techniques, to the advantage of sellers. Thi ...
. The pamphlet denounces "Yankee media penetration" through an assessment of
Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
as global ideological conveyor of American liberal - and increasingly neoliberal - values. The book analyzed the celebrated family of ducks and how the comics reflected North American
cultural imperialism Cultural imperialism (also cultural colonialism) comprises the culture, cultural dimensions of imperialism. The word "imperialism" describes practices in which a country engages culture (language, tradition, ritual, politics, economics) to creat ...
. This book enjoyed great publicity and it became one of the best-selling books in Latin America during the 1970s, largely because of American-centered interventions in Latin America and repeated efforts by American political, economic, and paramilitary assets to undermine the democratically elected government in Chile. After the
Chilean coup of 1973 Chilean may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Chile, a country in South America * Chilean people * Chilean Spanish * Chilean culture * Chilean cuisine * Chilean Americans See also *List of Chileans This is a list of Chileans who ar ...
, Mattelart returned to France where (at age 37) he had to restart his academic career—he became a visiting scholar at the
University of Paris VIII Paris 8 University (), or usually the University of Vincennes in Saint-Denis or Paris 8, is a public university in the Paris Metropolitan Area, Greater Paris, France. Once part of the historic University of Paris, it is now an autonomous public ...
Saint-Denis. He later became a full professor of Science of Information and Communication—a topic on which he later became a theoretician. In 1974, he worked on ''La Espiral'', a film justifying the Chilean route to socialism. Between 1983 and 1997 he has been Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at the
University of Rennes 2 – Upper Brittany Rennes 2 University (UR2; , officially Université Rennes-II Haute-Bretagne) is a public university located in Upper Brittany, France. It is one of the four universities of the List of public universities in France by academy#Academy of Rennes, A ...
, and in the postgraduate program at Paris III (Nouvelle Sorbonne) -Rennes 2. Between 1997-2004, he has been Professor at the Université of Paris VIII. Since September 2004, he is Professor Emeritus.


Books translated into English

* ''
How to Read Donald Duck ''How to Read Donald Duck'' () is a 1971 book-length essay by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart that critiques Disney comics from a Marxist point of view as capitalist propaganda for American corporate and cultural imperialism. It was first ...
: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic''. (with
Ariel Dorfman Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean- American novelist, playwright, essayist, academic and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American s ...
, translation by David Kunzle) (International general Editions, 1975) * ''How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic''. (with Ariel Dorfman, translation by David Kunzle) (OR Books, 2018) * Communication and Class Struggle. An Anthology in two volumes (with Seth Siegelaub, International general Editions, 1979 and 1983)* * Multinational Corporations and the control of Culture, (Harvester Press, 1979) * Mass Media, Ideologies and the Revolutionary Movement, (Harvester Press, 1980) * Transnationals and the Third World: The Struggle for Culture, (Bergin and Garvey, 1983) * International Image Markets. In Search of an Alternative, (with Michèle Mattelart and Xavier Delcourt, Comedia, 1984) * Communication and Information Technologies: Freedom of Choice for Latin America?, (with Hector Schmucler, Ablex, 1985) * Technology, Culture and Communication: A Report to the French Ministry of Research and Industry, (with Yves Stourdzé, Elsevier, 1985) * (Editor) Communicating in Popular Nicaragua. An Anthology, (International general Editions, 1986) * The Carnaval of Images: Brazilian Television Fiction, (with Michèle Mattelart, Greenwood, 1990) * Advertising International: The Privatization of Public Space (Routledge, 1991) * Rethinking Media Theories: Signposts and New Direction, (with Michèle Mattelart]
University of Minnesota Press The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. It had annual revenues of just over $8 million in fiscal year 2018. Founded in 1925, the University of Minnesota Press is best known for its book ...
, 1992) * Mapping World Communication: War, Progress, Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1994) * The Invention of Communication, (University of Minnesota Press, 1996) * Theories of Communication. An Introduction, (with Michèle Mattelart, SAGE Publications, 1998) * Networking the World 1794-2000 (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) * The Information Society: An Introduction (SAGE Publications, 2003) * The Globalisation of Surveillance (Polity Press, 2010)


External links


Sample articles by Mattelart


{{DEFAULTSORT:Mattelart, Armand 1936 births Mass media theorists Belgian sociologists People from Jodoigne Academic staff of Paris 8 University Vincennes-Saint-Denis Academic staff of Rennes 2 University Living people 20th-century Belgian writers 21st-century Belgian writers